There are good products and bad products. I’ve learned that if I like a product, it’s worth it to pass the word about it. If you had a tool to help with your career transition, you’d use it, right? Here are 4 tools I like that may help you in your career transition.
Indeed is a job search engine. The site compiles jobs from many different job boards and shows them all in one place. If you’re tired of checking HotJobs, Monster, CareerBuilder, and all the other job sites each day, indeed claims to be a one-stop shopping experience.
The site offers RSS Feeds of your customized searches as well as automated emails with your results (pretty standard).
One of the nice things about indeed is that it automatically shows you salary information for a given search term nationally as compared to locally.
Another nice feature is their “trends” which includes industry as well as geographical trends in jobs. While this feature appears to be relatively shallow, it’s got enough granularity to let you know if your hunches are right regarding your industry or region.
OK, so I haven’t totally figured out twitter yet. Maybe you haven’t either. One thing I do know is that TweetMyJobs is the coolest thing I’ve seen on twitter so far (sorry Wayne Sutton… it was this close).
TweetMyJobs allows you to go to their website (tweetmyjobs.com) sign up, and create your own personalized job “channels” for free. A channel is a basically a job search query, like Software Engineer in Raleigh, NC. Once you create that channel you can go to the site to see what jobs have been posted on it, or follow the channel with your twitter account.
Like all twitter feeds, you can bookmark an RSS Feed for a channel.
As I mentioned in my IS09 posting, I had the opportunity to meet TweetMyJobs founder and President, Gary Zukowski at the Internet Summit. Gary says there are a number of companies that are posting positions on TweetMyJobs exclusively.
If you don’t know about LinkedIn, you must have been living in a cave for the last 4 years. 95% of employers and recruiters use LinkedIn to find and research candidates. It’s a great tool for doing research, finding former colleagues, and figuring out who’s who in your industry.
Many good resources exist for coming up to speed with LinkedIn. Here in Raleigh, LinkMeIn has been a good resource for many, and it’s free.
One my favorite feature on LinkedIn is the “Events” feature. It allows you to find networking events, meet-ups, and other social get-togethers.
Another cool feature is the LinkedIn plugin for Firefox. If you use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, just get it. When you go to sites such as Indeed or Monster, the plugin pops up on the side of your browser and shows you who you know at a given company for a job posting. …I’d love to know how that works, by the way.
Ok, so if you don’t know about LinkedIn, I imagine you don’t know about Joel Spolsky either? Careful, or this whole “internet thing” may pass you by. He’s a Software Engineer who got tired of working for crappy companies and decided to start his own, based on the theory that if you treat developers right, they’ll do great things.
Ask me if I like his approach. …yeah, go ahead, ask me… I LOVE IT!
Turns out his little company, Fog Creek Software has been profitable since day one, grows at a steady pace and only hires the best of the best. They’re based in New York and only turn out products that are commercially viable, polished, and cool.
He also writes JoelOnSoftware.com a blog for people like you and me.
Recently, Joel launched stackoverflow.com, the most un-forum-forum-and-almost-video-game yet. Build up your reputation while helping others.
His newest venture is Stackoverflow Careers. Its currently in Beta. If you’ve used it please let me know more about the site, how it works, and what’s cool about it. I expect great things.
I’d imagine all the really good software jobs are on there…
If you have other tools you’d like to share, please drop them in the comments box below.
Like always, I hope this helps you in your search. Let us know if we can be of assistance, and check out our services.
